Touch
flicker-soft hand flashes
daylight starlight
hand to cheek
skin palmed
my ring that non-transgressable line
but this
snow-blind animal need
shared by grooming apes
and dogs sleeping entwined
the feel of sun of flesh on skin
has never been about sex but that
animal need to know we are not islands
or stones tossed out to sea, as we
breathe the same air, molecules shared,
pulse to pulse
in this brief habitation of skin
Thank you to the editors of 5AM for first publishing this poem.
